Jump Then Fall
by wouldtheywriteasongforyou
Summary: He builds around his heart walls as tall as skyscrapers. Taylor Swift song.


**Author's Note:  
Disclaimer:**

Written for the QL competition (round four, puddles chaser two: ground ; leaping ; "Wide Awake" by Katy Perry ; concrete noun) ; Wand Wood Competition "Spruce or Sycamore" ; Divergent Competition Erudite quote 3. "I think you're actually defying nature." ; Off the Block Competition "Freestyle: Easy"

22 June 2014. Inspired by "Jump Then Fall" by Taylor Swift and "Wide Awake" by Katy Perry. Word Count:

* * *

**Jump Then Fall**

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"He wants to say _I love you_ but keeps it to _goodnight _  
because love will mean some falling  
and she's afraid of heights."  
- anonymous

[-]

Skyscraper buildings tower over the couple and blot out the night's earliest stars. The couple meanders over to Millennium Bridge, as lovers often do when the summer nights are rainless and sultry. Beneath their steel ground, the Thames is a black velvet ribbon tugging at London's heartstrings; its restless water beats a steady current and feeds the veins of the city.

She watches as the two kiss. From her perch on the bridge's railing, and them not even fifty metres from her, Tonks can nearly see their souls peeking out from fluttered eyelids and parted lips. They unite with another over and over again: a hello here, a goodbye there (though their tongues never depart for too long). Hands trace silhouettes and smooth over shadows whilst making the abstract tangible. They whisper sweet nothings to one another in a language privy only to them. With the sounds of the never-sleeping city echoing in their ears and the moon spotlighting them from above, the two begin to waltz their way across the bridge and presumably back to a shared flat where they can come together in heart, soul, mind, and body.

Tonks kicks her legs and blows out a frustrated breath. Her left hand lets go of its grip on the safety railing as it reaches out into the darkness for a phantom lover of her own. He was real, once, realer than the passing ships in the night and their foghorn symphonies or the Globe Theatre off to her right where the whole world was the stage and idiots told their sound-and-fury-filled tales. He'd held her heart in the palm of his hand and bore its fragile weight like Atlas had shouldered the world. Now the roles have been reversed and she is the one holding his heart for safe-keeping while he learns how to train dragons out in the wilderness of Romania.

They were "just friends" when he'd said goodby but in his absence others had been trying to convince her that perhaps they had been a little more than friends. Even his mother asked about their supposed romance!

Charlie is a nice and handsome bloke but he is her best mate. Nothing in the world could make Tonks change their platonic boundaries.

But dear Merlin, does she miss her best friend. She wishes his internship would be done (unfortunately he'd only left Britain last weekend) so that he would come home already.

x

Halfway around the continent is a seventeen year old boy caught in between the phases of being a boy and a man. He's flying high up on cloud nine as he holds onto the spines of the Norwegian dragon. The wind in his air combined with the adrenaline rush is a high he never wants to get off of. He traded in his dream to become a professional Quidditch Seeker to become a dragon trainer instead - not even once has he regretted his decision.

What Charlie does miss is the social part of his life. In Romania, he is isolated in the forest with his dragons and the other trainers. Nothing here could rival Mum's homemade cooking and none of the girls were Tonks.

Tonks. Just the thought of her name sets a lazy, sappy grin stretching across his face. He thinks to close his lips only when a few bugs fly into his teeth.

His heart was leaping into his throat and his stomach was somersaulting the day he'd had to say goodbye to her. They'd been best mates since the very first day of First Year and Tonks had tripped over thin air and had landed in the seat beside him during the Sorting ceremony. But he had been smitten with her ever since Third Year; not that she'd ever known, of course. His heart did not fancy a stomping on from one Nymphodora Tonks.

Her break-ups were legendary and brutal - her stubbornness and spitfire attitude (both very admirable traits he loved about her) ensured that her past boyfriends had to have steel hearts if they wanted to survive to have another relationship with someone else.

He was the first one to dare to say goodbye to her first.

Tonks had issues with being left behind; Charlie suspected a bit of it was psychological residue from her mother's family's absence in Tonks' life. She also had commitment problems but she never had tried to abandon him and the stable friendship he had offered her.

Him being Charlie, of course he had to fuck everything up the day he'd left for Romania even though at the time he thought he had been doing the right thing.

He lands his dragon and pets the cool, iridescent scales. The morphing colours remind him of her freckles and her rainbow hair. Merlin, he was an idiot for letting her be the one who got away.

But what's done is done. He'd told her goodnight instead of the three words he had desperately wanted to say. She wasn't ready for love, and so he wouldn't dare try to force his affections on her. The distance between them is necessary for him to rearrange his priorities and to focus on reality instead of his silly romantic notions. He won't be returning to Britain any time soon: instead, he hoists himself high upon another dragon and builds around his glass heart walls that are as tall as skyscrapers.

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End file.
